It’s proceeding exactly as how we’ve seen. I don’t see a lower death rate in San Antonio compared to the “first wave”. Hospitalizations started going up about a week after cases started to increase. About a week after that, ICU numbers started to go up. Three weeks after cases started to rise, deaths started to go up. Sadly, it’s like clockwork.
Actually, I interpreted the data the same way as Asahi. Even hard hit parts of NYC may have only 35% of people exposed. Wealthy areas maybe had 10% antibodies. If herd immunity requires 60-70%, even NY would have a long way to go.
Do you appreciate how big of an “if” that is?
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The number is a guess based off of a working assumption that SARS-CoV-2 will behave similar to influenza … which in many many ways it does not, not the least of which being that children, especially those 11 and under, amplify the spread of influenza, and are at best fairly poor transmitters of SARS-CoV-2. No one is doing anything than making a guess for this bug. Could be 60 to 70% of adults overall. Unknown.
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Herd immunity is not a universal constant. (Just like R naught is not.) What functions as herd immunity will vary based on the behaviors and demographics of a specific neighborhood and region, and how those interact with the specifics of this germ’s transmission. A neighborhood that has multiple generations of young to elderly adults all living in loud close quarters, will take a higher percent functionally immune to slow down spread than one that fewer generations living all together, in which there is more time spent not right on top of a bunch of other people, and which is not as loud.
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Antibody positivity may or may not be a good proxy for immunity. Unknown.
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Off the point some but in fact it seems that this statement:
is not the complete story. See this Nature article.
Big fricken study. Controlling for confounders Black ethnicity increased risk by 48% compared to white.
First of all this really IS the first wave there.
Second of all the average daily mortality rate was in the 3s/million for most of March into April there and is now under 1. For right now the lower death rate is there whether you see it or not. The total number of deaths per day is higher more due to the much larger number of those infected. (An order of magnitude more confirmed cases per day now than then.)
Please don’t lecture me about whether or not I know that the number for herd immunity is a “universal constant”. The 67% is assuming the Ro is 3. To get down to 40% for herd immunity the Ro needs to be below 2. So 60-70% is a reasonable assumption. Not so big an IF. Considering the incubation and prodromal stage for the flu is shorter than that for covid-19, and that those with covid-19 shed virus while still presymptomatic, an Ro larger than the flu is reasonable and appears to match what we’re observing.
I am aware that people can lose their detectable antibody titer as they heal. If it is true that antibody tests are significantly underestimating those that were infected than that would only drive up the Ro and drive up the % required for herd immunity.
Hence the quotation marks. Although San Antonio really never had a wave, just a small ripple. Now we’re having our first wave. As far as death rates, they’ve been pretty steady per age range. Right now they’re at 7% for +65 and about 0.9% for 41-64 yr olds. The 41-64 yr old may be a little lower right now because we are still in a surge of new cases but I don’t remember it being that different except at the very beginning of the pandemic when case numbers were wildly inaccurate. Of course the 18-40 (mostly people in their 20’s and early 30’s) have a very low death rate 0.08%. However, again, the vast majority of these cases are recent so this will probably climb.
Obviously these are case fatality rates but they’re not too far off from estimated infection fatality rates. New approaches (holding off on vents, pepcid, dexamethasone, anticoagulants, recovered patient plasma, antivirals) have saved lives relative to very early in the pandemic, but these approaches have been used for a few months now.
So, I’m predicting death rates to rise in San Antonio, not decrease. If we are successful in keeping the virus away from vulnerable populations, we may be okay but I’m not optimistic. We can close down bars and restaurants and enforce masks, but how are we going to stop people from visiting their parents and grandparents? I’ll just cross my fingers and hope that our public campaign works. Thankfully, we have a good mayor along with Bexar county judge.
But why is Ro between 2-3 a reasonable assumption though? I’ve seen estimates from 1.4 - 4.
This thread won’t have much to talk about once the White House Covid Dashboard shows deaths going to zero…
Ultimately, you don’t stop people = everyone from visiting Grandma. But to the degree that fewer infected people visit Grandma, Grandma will have a much better outcome. And in the midst of a boom in younger cases, the more Grandma has the smarts to tell 'em to call instead, the more likely she is to survive another month until the risk recedes a smidgen.
So yes, you’re going to have a mini-surge of dead elders a few weeks after a mega-surge in youthful + middle aged infections.
We’re “enjoying” that mini-surge here in SoFL right now.
It’s really amazing how well this disease aligns with the weaknesses of US society. Most harms from thoughtless behavior accrue to others not to self? Check. Most harms from thoughtless behavior come 2-6 weeks in the future, far beyond the typical attention span? Check. Harms are concentrated among the lower SES? Check. Harms are concentrated among the non-white? Check.
I’m the farthest thing from a CTer, and I totally believe SARS-COV-2 is a product of Nature not of man, but still and all, this is really really good at hitting us where we’re really really bad. Hence the ugly outcomes to date and the even worse ones ahead.
And that’s before we include the baleful influence of our national “leadership”.
Are you talking about with mitigation Ro or Ro’s without anything? Before the shutdown, Ro estimates for places hit early range from 3 to over 6. Obviously, the low end of the scale would be for places not hit right away where people changed their behavior (or culture is naturally isolationist) or they’re in the middle of nowhere. If you live in the middle of nowhere, maybe an Ro of 2 would be too high.
Absolutely. Although since Trump got elected, this outcome has not surprised me a bit.
Which is exactly what I was talking about. In fact, the article has a whole section on “contact rates”. With mitigation, the Ro obviously drops. But herd immunity is talking about the biological characteristics of the virus and natural contact rates for a society. Otherwise, it’s not herd immunity, it’s the more desirable approach which is to get Ro (or Re) so low for a long time that the virus is largely eliminated from the population at least temporarily until the next flair up. Then play wack-a-mole for flair ups.
So if you live in butt fuck egypt where nobody likes each other, fine, your Ro is well below 1. Great. If you live in a fairly dense region where people socialize, then, yeah, an Ro of 2.5-3 is probably a reasonable estimate meaning, you’d have to reach 60-70% infected to reach herd immunity. Or you do at least the minimal of wearing masks and closing bars to get the Ro (or Re anyway) down for a long time.
We fucked up too bad in Texas, even San Antonio. So we’re going to be like this who knows how long, unless we do a full shutdown which we can’t afford.
The state I am most interested in following right now is Louisiana. It’s the only state with a current significant surge that actually had a first one of real significance. New confirmed cases started going up two weeks ago. The others rising significantly now are all first surges and the other states that had big first surges are staying pretty flat despite a good fraction of misbehaving citizens.
This is a chance to somewhat falsify a speculation (not strong enough to call it a hypothesis) that significant first surges would blunt the severity and rapidity of a second one.
Total death rates/million significantly rising on schedule by the end of next week, following Arizona and Florida in scale, scope, and slope, just behind a week, would make that speculation much less likely.
I was reading an article earlier (not going to link to it) that was saying that the projections are that deaths are set to spike in the next week or so. I’ve been following the CDC’s website, and it looks like we’ve been at around 1000 deaths a day for the last few weeks, so I presume this would mean a spike in those daily deaths. The known infection rate seems to be something like 100k a day if I’m reading the graph correctly for the country, with the total now nearly 3.5 million (it will be 3.5 million before the day is out, for sure). I’ve also been reading other reports that several states medical systems are getting back to the saturation level and on the cusp of being overwhelmed.
Your numbers are ballpark correct except new cases is only ~70k/day
Given that CDC has been hijacked and data management is being taken over on Trump’s orders can you really trust those numbers now?
“One day it’ll be like a miracle and disappear”
Well, that miracle day has arrived!